Yesterday when I was testing a quest file that I have been working on a long time with DarkFlameWolf, I noticed that the Combo Cycling combos don't cycle the way they're supposed to cycle. They go totally wild and cycle randomly and incorrectly making the whole quest unplayable. It does the same thing on ZQuest's Preview Mode as well, so it shouldn't be a ZC problem but a corrupted quest file where Combo Cycling got somehow screwed up permanently.
I'm kind of embarrassed to post this as I have no idea what may have caused the corruption. I have been building the quest as usual during the last few days, not making any drastic changes nor tinkering with Quest Rules or anything. Just been adding combos, making some cool 8-bit tiles and some cutscenes using Freeform Combos. That's all. And still, somehow the quest file got corrupted with disfunctional Combo Cycling during these last few days and yesterday I noticed the problem when testing the new screens I created.
I don't know if this is even the correct forum since I have no idea what is going on here, but it is a fact that beta14 corrupted a big an ambitious quest project of me and DFW and this is a serious issue. Fortunately I seem to be the only one so far to experience this screw up, but maybe some of you developers would like to take a look at the quest file and hopefully find out what is causing all this. And even if you cannot remedy the problem, it's ok, I have a backup copy of the quest from last week so not much work is lost. But at least you guys would have evidence of a quest file that got corrupted by ZC 2.11 b14.
If you want to investigate this problem, let me know and I'll send you an unpassworded file of the quest Lost Isle.
Did you import any tiles or even open a file in the tile grabber?
The same thing happened to me while working on NeoFirst. Twice. Combos I hadn't even touched were suddenly referring to wrong locations either in their individual graphics or in the combo they cycle to.
No, I never found out how. I just had to go and fix everything manually. =/ It's just the combo page that's messed up though. Correct the combos, and the world will fix itself too.
Yeah, this bug is nothing new. It's been around for three or four Betas, if not longer. It's probably the same Garbage Combo Bug that spawns its ugly head every once in a rare while.
BH4: Sorry, I should have been more specific in my thread starting post.
That's not the bug I am talking about, Josh. My combos are all fine and correctly set up. The problem is that Combo Cycling doesn't work at all in the quest file that got corrupted. Even if I try to set up new combos and make them cycle, they don't cycle the way they are supposed to. Instead, they go all wild and cycle very randomly and akwardly, making the quest unplayable and UNFIXABLE. 😞
DN: I haven't touched the Import feature, but I have been grabbing tons of tiles lately from .bmp and .gif files, however I have not opened files like .til or .qsu files if that's what you meant.
Again, I'm really sorry that I have no idea what triggered this screw up and what is causing it, but if there's any chance you could take a look at the quest file and see if you can find out the problem somehow, it would be very nice. And as I said in my first post, even if you cannot fix the quest, at least you have evidnece that quest files can get corrupted like this, which is really bad.
Sure, send me the quest and I'll see what I can find out.
Allright, I sent the quest file to your yahoo mailbox with a few lines of more specific info.
I keep my thumbs up that you manage to figure out something.
Okay. I'm looking at the file. The combos are definitely set up correctly. What's the last ZC version they worked correctly in? I have a feeling that it's not a corrupted quest but a bugged ZC that's causing the strange cycling.
Oh the quest worked just fine on beta14 the first week, but somewhere during the last weekend the combo cycling started acting strangely (I have a backup copy of the quest before and after the weekend and the one before weekend works perfectly so that's why I know when the quest file got screwed up even though i noticed the problem just a few days ago).
But I wonder how could it just be a bugged ZC if all other quest files work fine including earlier saves of Lost isle on b14 but not this particular Lost Isle file? Of course I would be very happy if somehow beta15 remedied the problem but I just have a gut feeling that somehow the quest file is corrupted permanently. But what do I know, I'm dying to know more from you DN. have you gotten the combo cycling to work correctly on b15 that you're working on or why are you suspecting that it might just be ZC's fault?
Could you send me quest that works for comparison? It would help me track down the problem. Since one quest still does work, that rules out ZC being the full cause.
Sure.
I just sent you an earleir save (still on b14 of course) of the quest file where everything still works correctly.
Combo 14568 is the problem. It has "Refresh animation on room entry" turned on. When I turned this off, the corrupted quest worked correctly. The quest that was okay didn't have that combo defined at all. Not sure if this is a bug or intended behavior that was simply used wrong or what. I may need to ask jman about it.
Wow! That's some very good news, DN! And I'm very thankful that you managed to find the answer so quickly. Now I can probably safely continue building the quest if unchecking "Refresh animation on room entry" really solves the problem.
Should I completely avoid using the "Refresh animation" feature or does this bug have something to do with combo 14568? Well, I can of course test it out myself but a confirmation from a developer would be always nice.
I'm not sure if it is just affecting the particular combo or if that setting would break cycling no matter where you set it. I'll have to look into it.
I don't know what you've figured out so far but I was trying to replicate this bug in a test quest of mine and I think I managed to screw up combo cycling again. What I did was simply check the "Refresh animation on room entry" box for a combo that cycles to a next combo and suddenly the quest file's combo cycling got wild like it did with the Lost Isle file. I may have to investigate even more if there are any other ways to trigger this screw up.
But I sure hope this is not intentional behavior! Otherwise I cannot carry out some of the nice tricks I had in mind... 😞
None of it is intentional. I screwed up somewhere.
I have noticed that during the process of building my quest, the larger numbered combos that cycled didn't work anymore. And the more I worked on my quest the lower the combos got that got screwed up.
If you need an example quest I can provide one.
AAAGH!!!! This goddamn bug is still in ZC! 😞
First it seemed fixed, but with enough combos with the "Refresh Animation on Room Entry" flags turned on, combo cycling gets screwed up in your quest. 😞
EDIT - Hmm... it seems it's only the preview mode in ZQuest that does this because when I played the quest, combo cycling was fine. So it seems that this post was a false alarm, though it bothers me to see the combo cycling acting totally wild in ZQuest's preview mode and therefore not having a clue how it will behave when actually playing the quest... This refresh Animation combo flag would be awesome if it worked 100% 😉
In a test quest I just made combo cycling is highly broken even without Refresh Animations... :-/
I'll need to investigate.
DarkDragon wrote:In a test quest I just made combo cycling is highly broken even without Refresh Animations... :-/
I'll need to investigate.
Crap... I'm having some crappy behaviour as well. Something simple like triggering a door to open, it used to cycle nicely and looked good, but now when the door is triggered the animation just picks up randomly so sometimes it looks the dorr doesn't animate at all and just... well opens.
I dunno if you experienced something worse, but dammit, it's getting very frustrating that combo cycling behaves differently in different betas and builds. 😞
Yeah I know; combo cycling itself hasn't been touched in recent history, so something bad (almost certainly involving pointers) is afoot. I've been and will be traveling a lot, but when I get some spare time this bug is at top priority.
That's good to know. I'll count on you and I'll keep thumbs up for you so that you will eventually be able to get rid of this wrong combo cycling behaviour.
Ok, I've been looking at the code and the "random" cycling seems to be intentional. Here is how combo animation and cycling currently works:
Each tick, for each combo on the combo page, the animation of that combo is advanced.
Then, for each combo on the screen, combo cycling is checked. If the combo is at the end of its animation, the combo on the screen is changed to the next combo in the cycle.
Now, here's how things go awry: suppose you have two combos, combo 10, with 3 animation frames, and combo 20, with 4 animation frames, and each combo has speed 1. Combo 10 has 20 listed as its next combo.
If Link entered the screen at tick 0, both 10 and 20 start at their first animation frames. Two ticks later, combo 10 is now on tile 12, and combo 20 on tile 22. 10 then cycles to combo 20, but since the current animation frame of combo 20 is tile 22, link sees tile 23 next and, if combo 20 itself cycles, none of the earlier animation frames.
Suppose instead Link had entered the screen at tick 9. Then combo 10 is on tile 10 (10 + 9 mod 3) and combo 20 is on tile 21 (20 + 9 mod 4). Two ticks later, combo 10 is on tile 12, and combo 20 is on tile 23. Now combo 10 cycles, but this time, since combo 20's animation has just ended, Link will see the entirety of combo 20's animation, as desired.
I'm not sure what to do here; it appears this algorithm is the way cycling has always worked.